Is Clay Lump a Traditional Building Material

Many reputable writers have asserted that building with clay lump (or clay bat) is an ancient tradition in East Anglia, traceable to the early seventeenth century or earlier. The basis for this belief is found to be unconvincing. There is no reliable evidence of clay lump construction anywhere in Britain before the 1790s, and there is substantial evidence that it was unknown earlier to those most likely to be well informed. The first recorded buildings structurally composed of clay lump were reported almost simultaneously in Perthshire and south Cambridgeshire in 1791-2; there is some limited evidence that clay bats were used earlier in a specialised form for the interiors of dovecotes. The process was not introduced in Norfolk until the nineteenth century, and was then described as a new and experimental technology. The economic and cultural reasons for its introduction are examined, and reasons are advanced for its adoption on a major scale in Norfolk and Suffolk from the 1830s

Archaeology · Architecture and Art History Studies · Architecture and Cultural Influences · Historical Architecture and Urbanism · History

• Medieval Clay-walled Houses

  Adam Longcroft•Vernacular Architecture•2006

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• The Origin of Clay Lump in England

  John McCann, J Clinton McCann•Vernacular Architecture•1997

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• Post-Medieval Britain in Periodic Literature in 1987

  John R Kenyon•Post-Medieval Archaeology•1988

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